Learn Windows Phone 7 Development in 31 Days – Day 21 – Working with BING Map Control in WP7

Introduction:

In this article we are going to see the most useful control on the Windows Phone 7 development, yes the BING Map Control. The BING Map Silverlight control for Windows Phone 7 development combines the power of Silverlight and Bing maps to get the best mapping experience for the developers and the real users to create location based application.

BING Map control in Windows Phone 7 application development are derived from the name spaces Microsoft.Phone.Controls and Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Maps. Developers need to register for the BING Map developers account to get the keys which are used in developing the application with the Bing Maps. Here in this article we will see the step by step process on how to make use of the BING Maps control and get the most enriching map application. [more]

Steps:

Open Visual Studio 2010 and create a new Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 application with a valid project name as shown in the screen below.

Note – To get the BING Map Keys first we need to register to the BING Map account using the below URL

http://www.bingmapsportal.com/

Once we register with our valid Windows Live ID we need to login again and go to the section Create or View Keys under the My Account category

Now we will be requested to provide the application details like below

Application name: a valid application name

Application URL: a valid application URL to access

Application type: a valid application type to be selected from the list

Once we provided the details we will be provided with the BING Maps key as shown in the screen below.

Now we need to go back to the Visual Studio 2010 F5debugWp7BingMapControl project and start designing the application by dragging and dropping the BING Map control from the tool box and some buttons as shown in the screen below.

Now build and execute the application to check the first 2 button is working as expected. Press F5 to start building the project and we can see the application loaded to the Windows Phone 7 Emulator as shown in the screen below.

We can see a message Invalid Credentials: Sign up for a developer account at: http://www.microsoft.com/maps/developers as shown in the screen above. To remove this message we need to make use of the key which we got after registering with the Bing Maps website. So go to the XAML Code and add the key to the BING Maps section as shown in the screen below.

Now build and execute the project and we can see the Zoom in and Zoom out of the maps effectively as shown in the screens below.

Now we got the expected output as shown in the above screens, now let us do a add on task of pinning the location normally we need to do while travelling using a map direction. To start coding the PINNING option first add the map1_MouseLeftButtonUp event and write the below code which will do the location pinning as shown in the screen below.

Now we are done with our code, let us build and execute the application by pressing F5 and we can see the expected output. Just use the Mouse Up to click on the location shown in the Windows Phone 7 Emulator to pin the location as shown in the screens below.

Conclusion:

So in this article we have seen how to use the BING Map control effectively with the Windows Phone 7 development to build a rich user experience.

Author

Karthikeyan Anbarasan, Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) in ASP.NET/IIS Architecture. He is the Founder and Chief Editor of the www.f5debug.net website and has authored books on Windows Phone and Business Intelligence(SSIS). He is also a Passionate Speaker and a Blogger on Microsoft Technologies.

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Sir ,
Thanks for all your documents . i am new in this field. I like your all posts as they are my first resource to learn .
Right now i am using a bing map ui in Windows Phone 7. can you please help me here.
I want to use bing maps ui element for some actions to perform on it .
How can we display route with directions including way points address.
I some how managed to get route way points and their address.
But i need to know how to get directions along it.
Can you please refer a post or guide me in this .
Thank You

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This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. For accuracy and official reference refer to MSDN/ TechNet. I have documented my personal experience on this blog.